Fighter mod

[EvilleJedi]

Proposing to add an option in the gametype to have large ships and carriers autmatically spawn a few fighters

 

this should make carriers more useful and give capital ships a screen against bombers

 

it could be disabled if people want to play without fighters etc

 

 

this would not repace building fighters, the autospawned fighters would be hitting a different unit cap and behave differently (they would be deisnged to be defensive, for example xwings woud get concussion missiles instead of torpedos for this role) you could build your own fighter squadrons, but this would be automated , wyou would be able to order the fighters manually, but they would have orders to return to guarding after a while

 

there shouldn't be too much of a performance hit from this feature and it is pretty much implemented in the old fighter mod, EmakeP is going to strip it down and refine it, but we want to judge intrest in the feature to see how far we should go with it

 

the fighters would spawn up to these values every few minutes or so to keep ships always in flight

 

ISDI

3 tie fighters

 

ISD II

2 tie fighters

1 tie interceptor

 

Escort carrier (would spawn multiple times)

3 tie bombers (up to 12 or so)

1 tie fighter

 

Mon cal

2 xwings

 

mon cal liberty

1 xwing

1 awing

 

 

thoughts?

[OOM-911]

I think its a really good idea

 

would be kinda cool to

[Freek]

Would be good, but they would need to auto-dock with the cap ships again when you go to hyperspace.

[dojoyoda_warlords]

I like the idea. I suppose putting the 'true' amount of fighter squadrons (eg 6 squads in an ISD) would be too PC intensive, and things would get out of control too quickly in any event. But the idea of having capital ships with their own fighter screen is cool.....now all I need is a new computer:).

 

-Freek's idea of an auto-docking feature would be cool too. More 'realistic' that a ship has to recover its fighters before jumping....I wonder if its possible to have a overrride button if this is added (Captain of a badly damaged ship screams "To hell with the fighters, just GET US OUT OF HERE!!!!!).

[OOM-911]

It would be cool if we could chose the amount

 

like realistic for people with fast PC's

or maybe screen for people with slower PC's

[Freek]

That could be an option in the game setup.

[skyblazer]

Well i enjoyed it when it was in earlyer versons so im all for it

[Emakep]

I made the original fightermod and Ill be making this new one as well, last time around I recieved almost no feedback what so ever from the community (with the exception of some folks saying they could/would NOT use it). This time around Ill need more feedback from folks who use it so I can make it into something youll want to have in your games.

I made a variant or the original script where you could cut the number of spawned fighters in half in the gamesettings (it had the 'true' ammounts if this option was not selected), if someone wants more or less fighters than what we offer now I could possibly re-add that option.

Having them autodock before going into hyperspace is something I have looked into and I dont think its possible (personaly I think hyperspace should always be disabled becouse the distances are way to small for starwars HS travel), but I could have them de-spawn (simply removes them, no death anim) if the capship HSs and then they would respawn as normal when it reaches its destination, that would make sure capships arent fighter-less for half an hour while the fighters catch up in normal space.

The old fightermod did not allow you to build fighters, all fighters where spawned from capships, this was done for a number of reasons, firstly it would prevent players from spamming tons of bombers, secondly it reduced alot of micromanagement since all fighters managed themselves (they guarded after they spawned, attacked enemy ships that attacked their mothership, docked if damaged etc.), most inportantly however was that it allowed me to write an entire new AI for computer players, however it did eat up alot of CPU power.

Most of you are prolly not aware of the stupid system for havings scripts handle fighter squads relic built into their game, long story short its not possible to make an AI that builds and uses fighters if you want to script the ENTIRE AI yourself (and thats what I was doing). My solutions was to have all fighters spawn instead, so the AI didnt need to worry about that, I made a proof of concept AI that worked IMO better than the stock HW2 AI, it built ships more intelligently, it took and held strategic points on the map, whereas the stock HW2 AI builds fleets and sends them one by one to kill you.

EvilleJedi tried it out once and I think he liked it, and if this version of the fightermod works out I might attempt to ressurect the AI project with a no-build-fighters variant of it at some point, if I can convince the community that a good AI is more inportant than building fighters that is.

[Venator]

Auto-spawning fighters from a Venator would be awesome. Now I just need to do a hangar interior for the Venator so that the ventral doors can open and launch them properly.

[Freek]

Fighter combat is an essential part of the game imo. If you ARE going to have to remove "regular" fighters and replace them with auto-spawning / AI controlled once, make it into a seperate game type, so that if we want, we can still build our own fighters and control them ourselves.

[EvilleJedi]

the current plan is as follows

 

you will be able to build fighters normally at your own discretion, this is to allow you to pick a mix for what you want

 

a game option will be avaialble that would make large capital ships like mon cals and ISDs automatically spawn fighters ( no bombers) these fighters would hit a different unit cap and would be geared towards defending that specific ship against bombers (IE they will stay around the capital ship as a defensive screen)

 

this option would also make didicated carriers like the escort carrier spawn bombers, again hitting a different unit cap, they would come under your control

 

 

I believe this implementation allows the player a lot of flexibility since they are building thier own advanced fighters and their own bombers and they can aportion what they wish out of thier fleet budget to these fighters (or not use them at all) if you don't like it, turn it off.

 

this implementatio nshould also work in multiplayer and should have very little processor overhead